Lambright Showing His Dark Side

If you don’t like Jim Lambright, you don’t like fudge, Fridays and 4 under par.

The University of Washington football coach is a gregarious, engagingly unpolished character whose emotions might as well be in department store windows, so available are they for inspection. In the wing-tip world of big-time college coaches, Lambright can be spike-heeled pumps.

He also is a candidate to be the first Division I coach to talk his way out of a job.

The other side of Lambright’s charm is a churlishness that received nasty exposure this week when he took the almost inexplicable tack of insulting a departing player, particularly when the player was prominent and had serious issues with his handling as a Husky.

Given quarterback Shane Fortney’s contributions, as well as the potential controversy, Lambright would have been well served to convey his disappointment privately and then tiptoe with Fortney to the door.

Instead, Lambright and Fortney threw each other down the stairs, hurling figurative punches all the way. Seattle sports hasn’t seen a donnybrook like this since Xavier McDaniel and Dale Ellis actually did duke it out on the street in front of Sonics headquarters.

Lambright contended Fortney’s decision to transfer for his senior year, because he wouldn’t be given a chance to compete for the starting job against Brock Huard, was the acme of disloyalty.

“This just cuts your insides out,” he said. “He quit. You don’t quit. We’re still one snap away from needing him.”

Even more disturbing were Lambright’s bully tactics. When Fortney wanted to have immediate knee surgery in the middle of last season, to begin a nine-month rehabilitation, Lambright exploded, according to Fortney, saying: “If you mess with me this season, I’ll mess with you next season,” only in language more profane.

For those who know Lambright, his attitude was not surprising, nor atypical for most coaches in that position. The first three priorities for big-time programs such as Washington’s are to win, win and win. The fourth is to look good doing it. Somewhere down the list is the welfare of individual athletes.

Since Fortney’s decision won’t help Washington win, Lambright was upset. Fortney shouldn’t have been surprised: If Lambright didn’t have a high concern for Fortney’s welfare when he was hurting, why would Lambright be concerned after the kid returned to health?

Lambright erred badly when he unloaded the “disloyalty” bomb in public. When Fortney realized he wasn’t going to be given a shot at dislodging Huard - remember, the Husky tradition is that a starter can’t lose a job via injury - he understood that the coaches broke a team covenant. And they broke it over the head of a player who took one for the team the previous fall.

It would have been foolish for Fortney not to look out for his own interests.

Whether a transfer was right is secondary to the fact that Fortney was the victim, not Lambright or the program.

Contrary to Lambright’s contention, Fortney can indeed quit, just as other players have before him, for reasons far weaker. Just as the Husky program has quit on some players.

When a big-time school overloads talent at a position, hurt feelings happen. The team’s desperation to win turns commitments to mush, principles to dust. But programs should have a team policy that mandates a graceful exit and whatever assistance the player requires.

Not a spitting contest in the papers. Yet Lambright has committed this sort of public misdeed often enough in his time as head coach that he jeopardizes his many good works, of which last year’s 9-3 mark was most prominent.

Running Fortney and his father out of his office, rebuking the kid in the papers, then defending his graceless actions are the marks of a small-timer. Every Husky fan wants to believe Lambright is above such things, as do the parents and high school coaches of potential UW recruits.

Lambright needs to get comfortable with the fact that the Husky program is strong enough to handle the losses of players, the mistakes of youth and the controversies that burn steadily at the edges of big-time college sports.

What it has more trouble handling is a leader who unaccountably works against the best interests of his players, his team and himself.